Wednesday, 15 October 2014

Interesting comments on PKK.

"In WSA we have a comrade that lived in Turkey for a while and befriended anarchist and left communist militants there. He is also pretty interested in this PKK supposed turn towards libertarian municipalism/confederalism. On the Syria thread there is a bunch of talk about this too, and there was a German Indymedia article talking about how in the civil war situation there some Kurdish areas have instituted a council democracy. When talking to him about this stuff though it seemed they were still very much regionalists but in a more practical sense of these supposed currents want to stake out autonomy for themselves via some form of the above, but don't think the situation is close enough that the world revolution or whatever is in the waiting. So long story short sounded more like a desire to create semi-autonomous zones short of outright nationalism. Being a staunch internationalist I am still wary of this and really would love to hear more from comrades about this.""Just a clarification on PKK. The leader, Ocalan, in taking up democratic confederalism, also criticizes the traditional nation-state model. Thus one can understand that some people reading this can imply that this is a break and heading in the municipal libertarian direction. However there is a bigger question and that is whether as anarchists we recognize the change in the direction of the leader as indicative as a change in the direction of 5 million people.

The leaders who seem to have great power can be influential, so no doubt this idea has been popularized. But I wouldn't make any judgments without seeing it on the ground. Not the least of all because the democratization of society is an important libertarian goal, but not the most important as it doesn't matter too much if crap decisions are taken in a democratic way or not.

Am not totally critical of this change in the PKK though and think it is in a more positive direction. Just think it's a mistake to try and reach and call things anarchist like that."

"As far as I can see the PKK is still a nationalist organisation, which is still carrying out a guerrilla war, and still engages is such anti-working class actions as kidnapping school teachers, to name just one example."

"Every national liberation struggle is nationalist, since if they win Turkish bourgeoisie will lose power and Kurdish will get it. "

"i'm seriously confused by how a lot of comrades seem to be orienting toward this. PKK has a several decade long record of being a clearly not anarchist, clearly anti-worker, and clearly left nationalist party. anyone who posts anything on libcom that can be remotely construed to be national liberation will get destroyed (good thing), but a left nationalist party that adds bookchin to its ideology is supposed to be something we should watch and see if its politics evolve? i wouldn't really say its sniping from the sidelines, but instead reasonable political critique. i wouldn't be surprised if PKK is potentially looking for a new international political support base now that capital M "Marxism" is in many ways morally bankrupt, possibly to try and emulate the support EZLN receive (whose official ideology is incidentally bookchin's libertarian municipalism)."